Two recent articles in The Wall Street Journal discuss divorce rates in the past 20-30 years in the United States and divorce’s effects on the families. For Generation Xers (those born between 1965 and 1980), one article says that their definition question is: “When did your parents get divorced?”

Divorce rates in the country did peak in 1980 and remain high throughout that decade. This continued a trend of increasing divorce rates that began in the 1950s. Divorce rates have slowly fallen since their 1980 peak, but remain near their 1970s levels. Americans may never again see the divorce rates of the 1950s, when less than 10 of 1,000 married women divorced.

Another article argues that the abundance of Generation X divorces may benefit children of those families. New research cited in the article suggests that children of divorced parents are more likely to have happier marriages when they grow up. The article’s two reasons for this finding are that these children learn not to repeat the same mistakes, and children who join stepfamilies find themselves in a better situation and learn how to build off that.

This new data comes from respondents’ feelings, however. Statistics may reveal it incorrect. Studies have shown that people whose parents were divorced are 59 percent more likely to divorce than their peers with non-divorced parents. If both partners come from divorced families, the risk of a divorce climbs to 189 percent more than both coming from non-divorced families. Generation Xers may prove the numbers wrong, but, for now, the data suggests that children with divorced parents are more likely to divorce than their counterparts.